How a covert visit to Chapel Hill solidified the Bears' conviction in Mitch Trubisky

Admittedly, it was a small task. But in the pre-draft process, every minute detail counts. So on March 16, Bears general manager Ryan Pace found himself curious to see how Mitch Trubisky would handle a routine assignment.

A quintet of key Bears talent evaluators was headed to Chapel Hill, N.C., to visit Trubisky, the promising University of North Carolina quarterback. On the docket was a Friday morning workout to assess Trubisky's arm strength, athleticism and poise in person. But first, a traveling party that included Pace, coach John Fox, director of player personnel Josh Lucas, offensive coordinator Dowell Loggains and quarterbacks coach Dave Ragone requested dinner.

As Pace does with all such get-to-know-you dinners, he asked Trubisky to pick the restaurant and make the reservation. It's a minor request. But it often can be revealing of a player's reliability.

Pace also ordered Trubisky to keep the meeting top secret, so as not to tip off anyone — not any Tar Heels coaches or teammates, not any other NFL execs or agents, not even a campus meter maid — to the Bears' interest.

Trubisky took the directive and pieced things together.

Before Pace and his cohorts arrived on campus, the Bears GM had a text. Dinner at 7 p.m.

The venue: Bin 54, a top steakhouse in North Carolina's Triangle region. And to keep the gathering covert, Trubisky made the reservation for six under an alias: James McMahon.

"I thought that was cool," Pace says.

All of Trubisky's visitors from Chicago appreciated that touch. They took it as evidence of all they had been told about the 22-year-old quarterback never taking himself too seriously yet always focusing on the details.

"That told me he was prepared, that he did his homework," Loggains says. "You knew this moment wasn't too big for him. He still was having fun with it."

It's very much worth noting that their dinner-and-workout connection with Trubisky came during a critical four-day, three-stop quarterback mission that sandwiched the Chapel Hill stopover between trips to Clemson, S.C., and Lubbock, Texas, to size up Clemson's Deshaun Watson and Texas Tech's Patrick Mahomes, respectively.

Talk about a pivotal road trip.

To be clear, the attraction to Trubisky as the potential savior to tug the franchise out of the quicksand of NFL mediocrity had started long before mid-March. For months, Pace had been convinced that Trubisky was the top quarterback in the draft. But for the longest time, he kept his evaluation to himself, not wanting to influence the assessments of his subordinates. Then, as the reports came trickling in — from area scout Chris Prescott, from national scout Ryan Kessenich, from college scouting director Mark Sadowski, from Lucas, from Loggains — the consensus energized Pace.

Still, over a 20-hour period during that field trip to Tobacco Road, the Bears put the finishing touches on their evaluation. For Pace, it was the culmination of what he admits had become a 10-month obsession with altering the Bears' frustrating quarterback history.

"The most important position in all of sports," Pace says. "And I don't think you're ever a great team until you address the position and you address it right."

Photos from Bears rookie minicamp at Halas Hall on May 12-14.

Good first impression

The off-campus dinner with Trubisky went exactly as the Bears hoped. Upon arrival, the McMahon party was ushered to Bin 54's secluded Wine Cellar for privacy, another Trubisky touch the Bears appreciated.

For more than two hours, with steaks all around and a couple of bottles of red wine open, the Bears probed to see if Trubisky's personality would mesh.

Pace wanted to gain a better sense for what made Trubisky tick. He listened to the young quarterback describe his upbringing in Mentor, Ohio, and his deep bond with his parents and three siblings. As the Bears GM made mental notes, that supportive, sturdy family dynamic resonated.

It had been a buoy for Trubisky throughout 2014 and 2015 when he was anchored in a backup role behind entrenched starter Marquise Williams. Through two seasons during which he saw the field only for emergency work or mop-up duty, Trubisky vacillated between frustrated and discouraged and ultra-motivated.

Through it all, his family kept him focused on his goals rather than his self-pity.

"Really," Trubisky says, "I would turn to myself, look at myself in the mirror and continue to believe in my dream."

Pace appreciated how Trubisky's natural confidence emanated. With NFL adversity inevitable, Pace also knew it was important that Trubisky had reliable outlets to steady him during the turbulence.

"And the way he was raised," Pace says, "he's not full of himself. He's more about his team and sharing the glory."

Over dinner, Loggains and Ragone pushed for a sense of Trubisky's football acumen. Though with Fox in his endearing and lively social state, the coordinator and quarterbacks coach had to find openings in the conversation.

"Five-on-one with Foxy can be hard," Loggains says. "He's the life of the party. You'll be sitting there like, 'OK, Foxy's starting to feel it.' A couple times it was, 'Coach, stop talking. We need Mitchell to talk.'"

Trubisky detailed his football study habits, expressing an ambitious vision for the preparation workload he would be willing to take on as either a backup or a starter.

Around the table, each of the Bears representatives made note of the quarterback's vim. With no professional success or failure to cloud his vision, Trubisky didn't seem to have an ounce of bitterness or skepticism or fatigue to him. He seemed all-trusting, innocent almost. It was refreshing.

Trubisky viewed his NFL career as a blank canvas with an infectious eagerness to get the paints out.

When the dinner ended, Pace and Fox walked Trubisky to the parking lot. It was then that Trubisky first revealed his wheels: the now-renowned beige 1997 Toyota Camry with the odometer north of 130,000.

Hiding in plain sight

Technically, it's accurate to call the Bears' on-field work with Trubisky the next morning a "private" workout — but only so long as the quotation marks remain. After all, with Pace unwilling to clue in anyone within the Tar Heels football program to the Bears' presence, the session was away from the football facilities, at North Carolina's Ehringhaus Field, the public intramural complex down a hill from the Tar Heels' baseball stadium.

So as Trubisky fired comeback darts to Tar Heels receiver Ryan Switzer and deep crosses to Bug Howard and up-the-seam touch passes to former tight end Jack Tabb, a women's lacrosse practice was underway on the adjacent field.

On one of their most important mornings of the pre-draft process, the Bears were hiding in plain sight.

At one point, Pace approached the father of one of the lacrosse players who seemed to be sizing up the workout.

And what about that silver-haired coach across the way? "Is that Paul Pasqualoni?"

No doubt, Pace agreed.

"I didn't lie to the dude," the Bears GM says. "I just went with what he thought."

Pace was too paranoid to share the truth, that it was actually Fox keeping a close eye on the workout and that Pasqualoni hadn't coached with the Cowboys since 2010.

For close to 90 minutes, Loggains ran his scripted workout. It was fast-paced and aimed to strain Trubisky mentally as much as possible. The Bears coordinator peppered Trubisky with coverage scenarios, asking him to make quick reads and good decisions.

"I went through the day as if I was a Bears quarterback," Trubisky says.

Through it all, Pace appreciated how unfazed Trubisky appeared and how much mutual enthusiasm flowed between the quarterback and his teammates.

"He was having a good time. You could tell," Pace says. "Instead of this nervous, intense vibe, it was more of an energetic deal."

The Bears knew from their film study that Trubisky had impressive arm strength and an ability to make what Pace calls "funny body throws," pinpointing passes without his feet set, when he was under duress or on the move. In the private workout?

"It validated what we saw on film," Ragone says. "No, there weren't 22 guys out there. But when you're standing next to a guy and he's going through a drill and you're watching him throw, you can feel it. Just, hey, it looks like it did on film."

Already, the Bears have hyped Trubisky's accuracy as an elite attribute that makes him NFL ready. Throughout his 447 passes last season, the tape consistently shows Trubisky's passes arriving on the money.

To be clear, Loggains emphasizes, Trubisky's completion percentage — .680 in 2016 — doesn't do justice to his special accuracy.

"It's all about ball placement," Loggains says. "If you're running a shallow cross and the ball's thrown (low and at your back hip), that may be a completion. Great. But now compare it to a throw that's (on the bull's-eye.) All of a sudden 6 yards becomes 22. That's what Mitch has. I don't think that can be taught."

When the Bears quintet wrapped things up, they thanked for Trubisky for the visit. As they drove back to the rental car return at the airport, they took turns offering their impressions.

Says Pace: "I could tell the arrow was pointing in a very positive direction."

There were still nearly six weeks left until the draft and still a handful of high-level meetings ahead to finalize the draft board. The Bears also were headed for a flight to Texas to meet with Mahomes. Still, Trubisky had left his lasting impression.

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Covert operation

Because the Bears hid their pre-draft interest in Trubisky with CIA-level secrecy, there aren't a lot of GMs around the NFL inviting Pace over for poker night. It's amazing, too, in the NFL's rumor-an-hour news cycle how little leaked, particularly after the Bears sneaked around with Trubisky in North Carolina, a state where the recognizable Fox spent the majority of his head coaching career.

Even walking through Terminal 2 at the Raleigh-Durham airport, Pace felt every glance, every finger pointing on the way to baggage claim.

Says Loggains: "People are shouting out, 'Coach Fox! We love you! You were the best coach the Panthers ever had!'"

Fox would grin and nudge his traveling companions.

"See!" he would say. "They love me here!"

Pace's amusement, however, was muted by his paranoia.

"Here I am thinking this is going to end up in a tweet or on Instagram," the GM says.

The Bills' pre-draft whereabouts, for example, were tipped in early April when North Carolina co-offensive coordinator Gunter Brewer tweeted a photo of himself posing with Bills coach Sean McDermott and owner Terry Pegula in Chapel Hill.

The Bears even went dark on Trubisky himself, cutting off contact after what had seemed to be such a productive mid-March visit. The team's presence at North Carolina's March 21 pro day was also minimal. Only Sadowski, Kessenich and Prescott attended and primarily to assess the Tar Heels' other prospects.

Pace believes that approach worked well too. After all, few if any teams around the league had any info to believe Trubisky-to-the-Bears was a real possibility.

During an April 17 interview on "The Dan Patrick Show," Trubisky casually disclosed he had gone through private workouts with the Bears, Jets, Browns, 49ers and Bills. Somehow, though, that revelation didn't gain much traction.

Then, the day before the draft, at a prospect interview session in Philadelphia, Trubisky asserted he had not met with the Bears at all after the combine.

"I thought they would show more interest, but who knows?" Trubisky said. "Some teams like to be more secretive about it. … It's exciting. I like surprises. I like mysteries."

Even after the Bears drafted Trubisky, the quarterback wasn't certain how much to say. On a draft night conference call with Chicago reporters, Trubisky alluded to his private workout with the Bears. But when asked where that occurred, he froze.

"I can't remember," he said. "Around my pro day."

A look at the Bears' quarterbacks through the years, from 1934 to present-day.

When Pace proclaimed publicly that he was looking to trade down from the No. 3 slot, he hoped to convince league execs further that the Bears weren't a threat to select a quarterback.

If all went well, Pace thought, teams interested in a quarterback would be convinced they would need only to jump in front of the Jets at No. 6 to be positioned properly.

Yet on the first day of the draft, and even more intensely as the Bears' pick closed in, Pace couldn't be certain whether Trubisky would be available at No. 3.

A handful of teams buzzed Pace's phone with trade questions, enough that the GM identified three quarterback-needy teams seriously motivated to trade up to No. 3.

"If they're willing to come to our pick," Pace says, "I also know San Francisco is willing to trade out. What's to say they're not serious enough to (move up) to No. 2?"

That unsettling feeling made Pace consider his worst fear — that after months of scouting and reassessing and obsessing over his options, the quarterback he really wanted would be taken out from under him.

So there it was, at 7:16 p.m. on April 27, the announcement that the Bears had traded a third-round pick, a fourth-round pick and a 2018 third-rounder to the 49ers to move up one spot.

Moments later, Roger Goodell stepped to the lectern at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and shook the league.

Mitch Trubisky was a Bear.

"I didn't see that coming at all," the quarterback admits.

The surprise factor coupled with the attention-grabbing trade price sent a shock wave rippling across Chicago.

Wait … The Bears just spent three additional picks to move up one spot? To draft Mitch Trubisky? The quarterback labeled "a mystery" by several esteemed draft experts? Even with Watson and Mahomes still available and the possibility Trubisky still would have been on the board at No. 3? This was Pace's master plan?

As confusion spread, a sense of accomplishment bubbled up in Pace's corner of the Halas Hall war room. He had landed his guy.

Of more significance, Pace reminded everyone in the room that Trubisky also had been rated as the top quarterback in the class by so many key evaluators in the building — Lucas, Sadowski, Loggains, Kessenich and Prescott.

The bold move

To be clear, the other two quarterbacks selected later in the first round impressed Pace.

Mahomes' "ridiculous arm talent" and knack for firing Roethlisberger-like bullets with two and three defenders hanging off of him wowed Pace.

In Watson, Pace identified a charismatic leader who energized his teammates and played well in so many pressure-packed moments.

But he kept seeing Trubisky's film running on a loop in his head. He would envision the way Trubisky used his athleticism to extend plays and his eyes to find open targets downfield. He felt certain Trubisky had the IQ to process NFL coverages.

And he had seen the poise the young quarterback consistently showed in "a noisy pocket when things are collapsing."

Add in Trubisky's leadership ability and work ethic and Pace was sold. Similar scouting reports from so many trusted colleagues only reinforced his confidence.

If Fox was slower to jump aboard, he since has felt reassured.

Fox's nine years as Panthers coach in Charlotte offer him a multitude of connections to North Carolina boosters, alumni and players. He has heard repeatedly about how good of a teammate Trubisky has been, how driven and resilient and steady he was for four years in Chapel Hill.

"For me, what separates people, when you get down to it, is their grit," Fox says. "The guys who really make it, they just never give up. That grit factor with Mitch, for me, is valuable.

"I know what he went through in Chapel Hill. And I know how he handled it. Like water off a duck. Just rolled right off his back. To me, it says a lot about him. How it transfers, who knows?"

Despite all the outside questions about Trubisky's inexperience after only 13 college starts, Fox wants to see the glass as half-full.

"If he would have stayed in school, he would be the first pick in the draft next year," the Bears coach says. "So why not get him started early? Truly."

If the Bears are lucky, their best-case scenario will be realized.

"I'm kind of hoping he's like a 22-year-old Drew Brees," Fox says. "But I can't predict that. If I could, I'd be at a racetrack somewhere. I'd be betting trifectas."

Truth is, no one can say with certainty what Trubisky will turn out to be, whether his career will be more Matt Ryan or more Matt Leinart.

In the days after the draft, Pace took a pulse of the widespread reaction. It's not that he was entirely surprised by the criticism. Just that he was struck by it.

Wasn't this an organization that had seen 20 quarterbacks make at least one start in the 21st century? Wasn't this a football-crazed city that experienced one measly playoff appearance during Jay Cutler's eight seasons at the controls?

Wasn't this a franchise that hadn't had a Pro Bowl quarterback since, yep, James Robert McMahon in 1985?

How, then, could there be such indignation about a confident and calculated attempt to get things right?

Pace knows the risk he took. If Trubisky flames out, the GM will be incinerated alongside him.

But Pace kept having the same inner-monologue. Sure, he could have aimed for caution. He easily could have taken a strong defensive playmaker at No. 3, filled a need and soaked in the praise for making a "safe pick." And maybe, Pace told himself, with such a move, the Bears could have made steps quicker back toward the middle of the league.

But that's not the end goal, to be striving for the 9-7 rung on the NFL ladder. Pace's grand vision involves a return to the Super Bowl.

A prerequisite for that, he knows, is landing a stud quarterback. Without one, he says, "you're a ship without a sail."

Hours after selecting Trubisky and six weeks after their visit in North Carolina, Pace sat at a dais, readying to explain one of the most meaningful moments in Bears draft history.

Mitch Trubisky was the new face of the franchise.

"There are times when you have to be aggressive," Pace said. "And when you have conviction on a guy, you can't sit on your hands. I just don't want to be average around here. I want to be great. And these are the moves you have to make."

One way or another, that move and those words will define Pace until the end of his time in Chicago.